Jeb had a plan.
It could have worked if everything broke his way.
Two things messed it up:
Trump and Sanders
The third problem is Jeb himself ... with or without the exclamation point.
Take out Trump and Sanders. I still don’t see a man with that last name and a big poy of money beating most of the field, splintered as it was. Carson would take him out in the south, Christie in the northeast, Rubio in Florida. Walker might have even gotten traction in that scenario. The frustration and anger with all things Bush would have concentrated on fewer candidates. As it is, the job isn’t done. John Ellis Bush for 1% in Iowa!
No, the thing that messed it up was simply the fact that he’s a Bush. He’s not a bad guy and was a good governor of Florida, and is not the raving liberal that people here make him out to be. But there’s no way he should be president, and I don’t think he has a chance of winning.
The problem is that he’s simply part of the Bush family and way of doing things, meaning ineffectual, timid, and sunk in the old attitudes and old ways (which never worked anyway). I would bet that if he somehow got to be president, you’d see a huge squadron of geriatric advisers behind him, because the Bushes are very loyal to their losers. Colin Powell, anybody?
Oddly enough, even though he’s not that old, he projects old and tired, although not old and tired and crazy, like Hillary and Bernie. So I guess the choice would be whether you like your “old and tired” with or without the “crazy.”
Fortunately, I don’t think he has a chance.